Subject: Image of a young child standing on an armchair wearing a drum and holding two drumsticks.

In this second volume of Strong on Music, Vera Brodsky Lawrence carries into the 1850s her landmark account of the nineteenth-century New York music scene. Using music entries from George Templeton Strong's famous journals—most published here for the first time—as a point of departure, Lawrence provides a vivid portrait of a vibrant musical culture. Each chapter presents one year in the musical life of New York City, with Lawrence's extensive commentary enriched both by excerpts from Strong's diaries and a lavish selection of little-known music criticism and comment from the period. The reviews, written by an often truculent, sometimes venal tribe of music journalists, cover the entire world of music—from opera to barrel organ, salon to saloon. In this New York, operas performed by renowned artists are parodied by blackface minstrels; performances of the Philharmonic Society are drowned by the raucous chatter of flirtatious adolescents, who turn concerts into a noisy singles' hangout; and irate critics trash the first performances of Verdi operas, calling the plots indecent and the scores noisy and unmelodic. In this volatile atmosphere, a native musical culture is born; its whose first faltering efforts are dubiously received, and the first American composers begin to emerge.

The fictionalized diary of a twelve-year-old boy who joins the Union army as a drummer, and ends up fighting in the Civil War.

Born in Montreal, Oliver Jones performed his first piano concert at five years old. He has become one of the most celebrated representatives of the Montreal Jazz Festival and a worldwide musical ambassador for Canada on many international tours. This exclusive authorized biography begins with his roots the enslavement of his African ancestors and immigration of his parents to Canada from Barbados and takes us to the present. Oliver Jones has received many awards to recognize his achievements, both as a musician and as a human being: the Martin Luther King Award, a Juno Award, the Cool Jazz Award of the Izzy Asper Foundation, the Order of Canada, the Order of Quebec, the Oscar Peterson Award, the Governor Generals Performing Arts Award, and in 2006, two National Jazz Awards: Best Jazz Keyboard of the Year and Best CD with Ranee Lee for their album Just You, Just Me